Ice

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT ICE - PAGE 5

Here I was once again buying cakes. This time at Wengers, where the variety has expanded to such an unbelievable extent that I wondered if I was in the same place! I remember that when we had moved away from Delhi, whenever anyone asked what we wanted from the Capital, we'd ask for chocolates. Wengers must at some stage have belonged to a 'Mr.Wenger' who may have been either a baker or a patisserie chef, but all this is conjecture and it could just as well have been named after another eatery.

BENGALURU: Olacabs is on the verge of buying rival Taxi-ForSure for about $200 million (Rs 1,250 crore), an aggressive move which sets up a straight fight with Uber for dominance of India's taxi aggregation market. According to three people directly involved in the negotiations, Olacabs, backed by Japan's SoftBank, will pay cash and offer stock in what will be the second-largest buyout in the consumer Internet market after Flipkart's acquisition of fashion portal Myntra for an estimated $370 million last year.

NEW DELHI: It's almost as costly as gold and as lucrative a commodity to smuggle. The rich and the blueblooded around the world have loved it for millennia. The richest country in the world, the United States, loves it so much that even (clandestine) imports from Iran are okay. India's elite loves it, too, and it provides the most pleasing link between politically troubled Kashmir and the rest of the country. It's, therefore, a super-premium product that trumps geopolitics. So, what is it?

MUMBAI Over the past five years, the stocks of companies in the information, communication and entertainment sectors have exhibited the highest volatility among the 30-stock Sensex. Zee Telefilms has the highest absolute volatility of 67%, followed by Satyam and Wipro, with volatilities of 63% and 62% respectively. Infosys is not far behind with a volatility of 51%. These companies also have a high relative volatility, with 'beta' greater than 1.4. Satyam has the highest relative volatility of 1.85.

MUMBAI: Unilever will roll out its premium Magnum ice cream bars in the country next month to cash in on the growing aspirations of India's increasingly affluent consumers this summer. The Anglo-Dutch multinational's Indian unit, Hindustan Unilever, will launch Magnum bars â€" premium vanilla ice cream on a stick wrapped in thick Belgian chocolate shell â€" in Chennai at Rs 75 apiece in the second week of April, a company official said. Popular ice-cream candies and cones in the country are priced much lower at Rs 5-40, but Unilever expects India's increasingly aspirational consumers to readily pay a premium for a superior product.

Returning from a holiday may not be as exciting as going on one, but you do come back brimming with stories, bags laden with goodies and cameras loaded with memories. If, however, you aren't careful about what you are lugging through the airport, there's a chance that you end a beautiful holiday on a sour note. Many passengers, unaware of what they are allowed to carry abroad or bring back, unwittingly breach the law and get caught at the customs. Claiming ignorance about the rules isn't going to cut ice with the customs officials, who will impose a hefty duty on the items that you are carrying.

Looking at the smooth dome-like summit of Mt Blanc I understood why they say you don't need any mountaineering skills to climb the highest Alpine peak in Europe: all you need to do is put one foot in front of the other and you will get there. Yet only 50 percent of those who set out on this seemingly easy task achieve their objective. The reason for this high rate of failure is that the human body starts to struggle once it crosses the 4,000 m above sea level barrier: the breathing gets laboured and muscles start to cramp.

NAGPUR: If the first Rath Yatra undertaken by LK Advani over a decade ago was to force the Hindutva issue on the national agenda, the recent one is aimed at doing exactly the opposite. The deputy PM's ongoing voyage underlines two points. First, he has succeeded in converting his venture, the Bharat Uday Yatra, into an NDA mission, and not a pure BJP exercise which would have driven some people away. In Andhra Pradesh, he skilfully roped in the NDA's lifeline Chandrababu Naidu onto the yatra platform, hitherto reserved only for 'hardliners'.

The dramatic improvement in the relations between New Delhi and Islamabad last week reflects the rapidly changing perceptions of a unipolar world. In its first decade as the world's sole superpower, the United States appeared to be seeking the image of a global statesman, emphasising persuasion rather than military might. And the war on terror seemed to be a search for principles to dominate a new world order. India may have learnt very quickly that Americans do not treat all terrorists with equal revulsion.

Growth numbers released by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) on Friday should warm the cockles of all Indian hearts, especially of reformers. The message is unmistakable: the economy is in fine fettle. Growth in gross domestic product (GDP) at 8.9% during the first quarter of the current fiscal is not only better than the 8.5% recorded during April - June 2005-06, it is also the highest first quarter growth since 2000-01. Together with the 9.3% GDP growth recorded in the Jan-March quarter, the latest figures make for a very impressive showing during this calendar year.